Liza Thorn, the Muse of Saint Laurent

Liza Thorn of the band Starred: “When you’re in a band and you’re a girl, the fashion people immediately accept you.”

Chad Batka for The New York Times

By WILLIAM VAN METER

February 27, 2013

It was almost 2 p.m. in an industrial section of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Liza Thorn was on her way to get breakfast. She had stayed up late the night before recording, and what little sleep she got was on the studio’s couch.

On this mid-December afternoon, her attire consisted of mirrored aviators and an ankle-length reddish fur coat that would more accurately be described as in tatters than vintage. It looked like a result of a 1920s socialite having fallen into a combine or been attacked with a scythe. There were huge slashes in the matted fur with the lining exposed.

“It’s Labrador,” she said, “or some other kind of dog.”

Ms. Thorn is joking, of course, despite the Cruella De Vil meets Transformer-era Lou Reed look. She also wore an almost-matching stole complete with paws (also vintage, also a mystery animal).

Ms. Thorn, 27, sings and plays guitar in the duo Starred (the other half, Matthew Koshak, 30, was still asleep in their small studio, which is crammed with so much vintage equipment that it looks like the cockpit of a spaceship). The band specializes in dreamy psychedelic rock with guitar pitted against feedback and drone effects, the vocals often buried underneath dissonance. Ms. Thorn is well on her way to being a rock star and is already, albeit grudgingly, a fashion plate.

“When you’re in a band and you’re a girl, the fashion people immediately accept you,” she said, “but the music nerds don’t. I have to say no to a lot of fashion stuff.” That she has to turn down interviews is remarkable.

Starred’s output consists of one six-song EP, “Prison to Prison,” and a seven-inch single on the tiny Brooklyn label Pendu Sound. (A four-track vinyl single will be released next month.) They are doing a demo for their debut album.

But Starred’s (and particularly Ms. Thorn’s) presence in the fashion realm has been startling. Last year she was in fashion articles in Purple and V magazine. She also was prominent in Hedi Slimane’s portrait show, “California Song,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“Hedi’s sweet and generous, and working with him is very organic,” she said.

It has been said that Ms. Thorn and her homegrown California punk-in-a-caftan dress sense may have been the secret muse behind Mr. Slimane’s “L.A. Woman” Saint Laurent debut.

Matthew Koshak and Liza Thorn of Starred at their studio.

Chad Batka for The New York Times

“I mean, I don’t know,” she said, looking mortified when asked for the veracity of the rumor. “I’m not going to sit here and say that.” But he did fly her to the Paris show, where she was seated in the front row. Starred’s plaintive “Call From Paris” was the soundtrack for the reintroduction of the Saint Laurent Web site.

It’s easy to be smitten by Ms. Thorn, even as she sits in the cafe eating an egg sandwich. She is a beguiling presence. Disheveled bleached hair sets off her pale face. She has hazel eyes that change colors depending on the light, and her teeth are spaced apart. Her eyebrows are also bleached to near invisibility. All of this adds up to an original, untraditional beauty, a more attractive version of the Warhol star Andrea Feldman. She exudes utter confidence.

Ms. Thorn was raised in Marin County, Calif., and lived with her mother. She took up the guitar at 13. “I was reading ‘Please Kill Me’ and wishing I was in the city,” she said. There were strict rules in the household, and Ms. Thorn moved to San Francisco at 15 to attend Catholic school and live with her father, a Buddhist priest. “You don’t raise somebody to be Buddhist,” she said. “It’s not like: ‘Meditate! You’ve got to meditate!’ ”

The rules were lax. “It was basically your curfew is tomorrow at noon, do whatever you want,” she said. She joined an abrasive noise band called So So Many White White Tigers. They’d play in backyards to crowds of 20.

“I’d throw myself on the drums,” Ms. Thorn said. She also screamed a lot.

After high school she moved in with her boyfriend, Christopher Owens, and they formed the band Curls. After their breakup, Mr. Owens fronted the band Girls. (Mr. Owens was the star of the last YSL men’s campaign). After the breakup of her next band, Bridez, Ms. Thorn moved to Los Angeles. Mr. Koshak, a reedy, tattooed Colorado native, was the sound man and tour manager for Girls.

“I met Liza and we kind of fell for each other,” he said.

He was more forthcoming than Ms. Thorn, who maintains that she is single. “I think house painters date other house painters,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Starred began organically. “She was super raw when I met her,” Mr. Koshak said. “Now she is writing fingerpicking and arpeggiated songs, pretty advance stuff for someone with no technical training.” The two came to New York in August, moving seven times before finally landing in the East Village.

“Elizabeth and Guitar, Los Angeles, 2011,” a photo of Ms. Thorn in Hedi Slimane’s portrait show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Hedi Slimane

Since December, Starred has taped a live performance for Vogue’s Web site, and Ms. Thorn has filmed a commercial (to be shown in Japan) for Uniqlo.

“I generally don’t wear comfort clothes,” she said. “The idea of being a slob is uncomforting for me, wearing stretch pants or whatever.”

At the end of January, Starred opened for Chelsea Wolfe at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The duo aren’t used to playing such traditional sites. Generally they play in galleries and at parties, a modus operandi that culminated in playing at MoMA PS1 in Queens against a backdrop of a video of “Call From Paris” by the director Grant Singer. Ms. Thorn starred in Mr. Singer’s experimental film, “IRL,” alongside the singer Sky Ferreira. It will play at festivals this year.

“It was a given Liza had to be in the film,” said Mr. Singer, the director. “She has an electric personality and is uniquely beautiful. When she enters a room, it’s, ‘Whoa, who is this?’ ”

Mr. Singer is struck by Starred’s dynamic. “He’s into experimental,” he said of Mr. Koshak. “You go to his house and he blasts crazy drones that sound like death. Liza has a traditional songwriting approach. Together they make something half noisy and half beautiful.”

That is what they delivered at the Brooklyn concert hall. Mr. Koshak was in the shadows in a hoodie, his electric guitar rigged to various effects pedals. Ms. Thorn took to the stage in a floor-length tattered lace dress, her hair pulled into a messy bun on the front of her head like a rhino horn. They delivered gorgeous fuzzed-out versions of their songs, a hypnotic somnambulant haze.

Backstage, Ms. Thorn swigged from a bottle of schnapps. “It’s what Swedish people drink in the morning before they go skiing,” she said.

She was unsure of her performance. “It sounded a little lopsided,” she told friends in the dressing room who reassured her the show was a success.

“I have all my yes men around me,” Ms. Thorn said, waving arm in an exaggeratingly grandiose manner. “Everyone thinks I’m so great! Just kidding.” And she tossed the bottle into her purse.

Correction: March 7, 2013

An article last Thursday about Liza Thorn, a rock musician popular in the fashion industry, misidentified the film being shown at MoMA PS1 at the time she performed there. It was “Call From Paris,” not “IRL.”